The Art of Retrospection
by Agent Otter
Summary: Will uncovers information about project Helix that makes life difficult for Sydney and Vaughn. Set after "Firebomb". Chapter 5 is up!
1. Chapter 1

Title: **The Art of Retrospection**  
Author: agent otter  
Summary: "Later, he would flex his hand, over and over again, trying to rid his joints of the soreness that came from clutching the gun so tightly. Later, he would break down. Later."  
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine. Damn. Neither is Bradley Cooper. Double damn.  
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.  
Author's note: This story comes to you live and unbeta'ed, and was written during hours when I should've been working. I hope you appreciate the company's sacrifice.

  


_"It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them."  
-- Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld_

Later, he would wonder about serendipity, fate, destiny, and the million miniscule decisions that were made in a single day to bring him to that place in that moment. Later, he would have all the time in the world to re-examine, down to the millisecond and in excruciating slow motion, the way the bullets ripped through her body, one after another, and the way the blood sprayed and spattered the walls, exploding from her ruined chest and the gaping exit wound that blossomed at the back of her head. Later, he would think about how he stood and stared for a frozen, incredulous moment, at the antique picture frame on the nightstand and the glistening wet splash that obscured the photograph inside. Later, he would flex his hand, over and over again, trying to rid his joints of the soreness that came from clutching the gun so tightly. Later, he would break down. Later.

* * *

He remembered that, in his younger days, he was more of a morning person. As a boy, there were early-morning hockey practices. In high school, he started a long-time habit of rising early so he could jog, shower, and eat a leisurely breakfast. Since he'd met Sydney Bristow, sleepless nights had chipped steadily away at that schedule, over time, and then he'd thrown it entirely out the window, because he'd discovered a very compelling reason to just stay in bed.

The radio suddenly snapped on for the third time that morning, and Sydney's arm reached out from under the covers just long enough to give it a firm slap to turn it off. Then she rolled over, buried her face in his shoulder, and flung her arm across his stomach. The brief contact with the air outside their cocoon had chilled the appendage, but he smiled anyway, covered her hand with his own, and rested his chin against the crown of her head.

"We have to go to work," he whispered.

A muttered grumble was her only reply. His smile widened, and his other arm, trapped under her neck, twisted downward to touch her back, up and down in light, even strokes. There was a soft hiss of rain on the roof, and he listened to it for a few moments before trying again.

"Come on, baby," he urged. "You need to wake up. We've been late the last three mornings in a row."

There wasn't even a grunt this time to acknowledge that she'd heard him. His eyes narrowed. So she wanted to play rough.

He shifted, just enough for his lips to reach her, and slowly, seductively, planted kisses along the pale arch of her neck. She murmured again, squirmed closer, but didn't open her eyes. He caught her earlobe gently between his teeth, planted another kiss in that sensitive spot just behind her ear, and then whispered to her, in a low, sultry voice.

"Will Tippin in a sequined evening gown."

Her eyes popped open and she made a small sound of distress. Then she shoved him bodily out of the bed. He hit the floor with a thud, but he was laughing even as he hauled himself up.

"Why did you say that?" Sydney groaned, pulling the covers up over her head. "I didn't need that mental picture! Now every time I look at him I'm going to laugh and it'll give him a complex!"

Vaughn smirked, retrieving "his" towel from the hook on the back of the bedroom door and wrapping it around his waist. "Woke you up, anyway," he said, and then ducked out the door just in time to avoid the pillow she threw at his head.

When they were late to work that morning, they blamed it on the rain. Drivers in Los Angeles, Sydney complained to the room at large, didn't know how to handle a little moisture. Vaughn nodded his agreement -- though they'd taken pains to arrive in separate cars, as if there was still anyone in the office who _didn't_ know about the two of them -- and Weiss was kind enough not to point out in public that they were both full of shit. He liked to save that sort of thing for private conversations and small instances of blackmail.

Sydney had her own tasks for the morning -- a visit to her mother, first, and a 10 o'clock debriefing with Kendall -- and she left Vaughn in the rotunda, shooting him a small smile before she disappeared from sight. Weiss watched Vaughn watching Bristow, and finally clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"She could kill you without breaking a sweat," Weiss proclaimed.

"Yeah," Vaughn agreed, and he tacked a dreamy sigh onto the end for Weiss' benefit. "I've got a meeting with Tippin this morning. Have you seen him yet?"

Weiss nodded, pointing toward the corridor which led to the maze of analyst cubicles in the next room. "They brought him in the back way an hour ago."

Finding Tippin in the maze of cubicles was something of a time-consuming undertaking, and looking out over the makeshift analysis division -- temporarily housed here until renovations were finished in another part of the building -- he began to wonder whether he'd need a map to navigate. After at least five minutes of searching, he finally found the tall man crammed into a frighteningly small cubicle, hunched over a laptop and folded in on himself like an origami crane in his cramped quarters.

"Nice office you've got there," Vaughn said. When Tippin turned to look at him, he was somewhat surprised that he managed not to continue with, 'And you'd look hilarious in a sequined evening gown.' He was getting a vivid visual and it was every inch as difficult as he thought it might be to avoid laughing. Apparently, he mused, he'd also cursed himself with that particular wake-up call.

"Yeah, but I don't think it's very Feng Shui." Will answered, closing the laptop. "You guys offer workman's comp if I end up injuring myself trying to squeeze in and out of here, right?"

Vaughn just couldn't help it. He'd always been jealous of Will, that he could walk around with Sydney in the open, that they were so close, that he had a relatively normal life. But somehow despite it all, Vaughn liked the guy. There was something about the former reporter that made it impossible _not_ to like him. Although, Vaughn admitted, it may also have had something to do with the fact that Vaughn himself spent his nights in Sydney's bed, now. Will hardly seemed like any kind of competition anymore.

The pair of them walked back to Vaughn's somewhat more spacious office, once Will had extracted himself from his cube, and Will sank with a satisfied sigh into the guest chair on the opposite side of Vaughn's desk.

"So how's the job going?" Vaughn asked, leaning back in his own -- yes, he admitted it, extremely comfortable -- executive chair.

"It's pretty interesting stuff, actually," Will replied, perking up a bit. "Kendall has me doing some analysis on the Rimbaldi puzzle. I've even gotten a look through some of your old mission briefs. Did you really bust Sydney out of FBI custody?"

"Ah... yeah. I guess we did. Anyway, I've got another research project for you, if you're up for it."

Will nodded eagerly, accepting the thick file folder that Vaughn offered him.

"It's a device called Helix that we came across not too long ago. Simply put, it's capable of restructuring a person's DNA to turn them into someone else. The man who invented the device used it to disguise himself as a CIA agent, and it was impossible to tell the difference. Intel suggests that an ocular scan would allow you to tell the original person from the double, but we don't know if that's accurate. What I've given you is everything we have on Helix. The device itself has been destroyed and we weren't able to recover schematics. It was sort of a mission that went south."

Vaughn winced a little and Will got the distinct impression that Sydney had been on that mission.

"Is there something specific that you're looking for in this data?" he asked.

Vaughn nodded. "Intelligence gathered on the mission that destroyed Helix -- the case file's in there if you need to review it -- indicates that the device had been used twice. One double is already dead. The other... the other, we don't even know who it is."

Will flipped through the file in his hands, pausing to squint at photos of the two identical men. "It even gives you the other person's voice?"

Vaughn nodded.

"What about their personality? Their memories? You'd just have to mimic that one, right? Be a good actor."

"As far as we know, yes."

Will hummed thoughtfully in the back of his throat, then stood. "I'll see what I can figure out, but it doesn't sound like there's a lot to go on," he said.

"I know." Vaughn shrugged, shaking Will's hand across the desk. "Just see what you think about it. You never know what might be helpful."

Will nodded and wandered out the door, his nose already buried in the file. Vaughn watched the other man go, then let his eyes drop to the growing stacks of paperwork on his desk. Sighing the heavy sigh usually reserved only for martyrs and mothers, he reached for the first stack and braced himself for a very boring day.

------------------------------

Please review me? Please? I crave validation. Even nitpicking. I'll settle for a lukewarm acknowledgement of my existence. It's just that I'm so _needy_...


	2. Chapter 2

Title: **The Art of Retrospection**  
Author: agent otter  
Summary:   
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine. Damn. Neither is Bradley Cooper. Double damn.  
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.  
Author's note: I started writing after "Firebomb" but before "A Dark Turn"... because the new factors brought about in "A Dark Turn", which I don't much feel like dealing with, I'm going to keep the story in the current timeframe, and kind of make it an AU breaking off after "Firebomb". Hang in there.

  


Will Tippin was quite sure he'd never get used to the whole spy routine. When he'd left a message for Jack Bristow requesting a meeting, he'd expected a phone call, maybe an email. Something along the lines of "My office, 2pm." He really hadn't been expecting Bristow's response to come in the form of a carryout menu for Tong's Noodle World, shoved under his front door. It was a common practice in LA for take-out menus to be forced upon everyone in an apartment building, but there were none on his neighbor's doors, so he picked up the menu and took it inside. Ultimately, he decided that the highlighter used on one of the menu items indicated that should call and order it, so he did.

The seafood noodle soup came with a side of eggrolls and a note from Jack Bristow.

_Benicio's_, it read. _20 minutes._

The maitre 'd at Benicio's restaurant led him on a weaving path between tables, through the kitchen, and into a rear storage room, then left without a word. Will hardly noticed, because he'd caught sight of Jack Bristow, seated with utmost dignity on a folding metal chair, and looking none too happy.

"Thank you for meeting me," Will said. He shifted the thick file folder in his hands, trying to avoid staining it with the sweat that had suddenly broken out from his palms.

"I sincerely hope that this is an emergency, Mr. Tippin," Jack replied, nodding toward the second folding chair.

"Yes, it is. Well, sort of." Will sat at the edge of the seat, nervous and tense. "Last week," he explained, "Agent Vaughn asked me to research a project called Helix. You're familiar with it?"

Jack nodded. "Of course. I was in on the operation. Genetic restructuring."

"Right. Well, Vaughn's concern was that Sydney and this other guy, Agent Lennox, had looked at some records for the device that indicated it had been used twice: once on Agent Lennox, and once on somebody else. No one knows who."

"If you have something to report, Mr. Tippin, Agent Vaughn is the case officer--"

"That's just it, Jack," Will interrupted. "I found some stuff. Interesting stuff. In wiretaps I've been reviewing for another case that should've been totally unrelated to Helix. I think it indicates that Dr. Markovic, the guy who invented Helix, has been fine-tuning for some time. The one Sydney destroyed was his third version of the device, and the only version that ever worked. But it's not like he finished it a month ago; he's been testing it for some time."

"You think there were more than two uses on the machine?" Jack asked. He frowned, in his own subtle way, and leaned forward.

"No, I don't think that at all. I think that just using the Helix is a difficult and time-consuming process, and I don't think they would've been able to do more than two in this time frame. But I don't think Dr. Markovic used the machine on himself first. I mean, he'd already killed plenty of people in testing his first two machines; why commit suicide by testing something unproven on yourself? I think he was the second subject. And I think I figured out where the first duplication took place."

Will opened the file folder in his hands, and passed a photo to Jack.

"This is an estate called Le Petite Rose. It was owned by a French government official named Jean Luc Rave."

"That sounds familiar," Bristow said, frowning as he peered at the pictures.

"It should. Kendall's had me reviewing some of Sydney's mission records, which is how I found this. She went to Le Petite Rose late last year, to plant a bug for SD-6. On the way out she discovered some sort of medical lab in the basement of the building."

"Right," Jack affirmed, picking up the thread of the memory. "Agent Vaughn had been missing after Taipei, and she found him... there." Jack's voice trailed off to a mutter with the last word, and he met Will's gaze with new understanding.

"No one is sure what the lab was used for," Will said. "Apparently no one is entirely sure what happened to Agent Vaughn between Taipei and Syd's rescue. But the wiretaps she installed at the estate tell us a lot. I believe Markovic was based at Le Petite Rose at the time. I believe he was testing Helix there. I think maybe they wanted Sydney to find Vaughn down there. And I believe there's a possibility that Agent Vaughn might not be Agent Vaughn."

* * *

The third time it happened -- that day -- Weiss found them in a storage room in the depths of the Joint Task Force complex. Vaughn was pressed against the wall, his arms pinned down by a jacket not entirely removed, and Sydney was attacking his lips with all the ferocity of an invading Mongul horde. All Weiss had wanted was a new stapler.

"You guys realize there's security cameras in here, right?" he said.

Neither of them broke their embrace to respond, but Sydney waved a hand toward a small black box sitting on a nearby shelf. A signal jammer. A security team would probably be down at any moment to investigate the camera outtage.

Weiss sighed a heavily put-upon sigh, grabbed a stapler -- ah, shiny and new, still in the packaging! -- and made for the door, which was where he ran bodily into Jack Bristow.

"Ah, hey, Agent Bristow, how's it going?" he fumbled, pulling the storeroom door shut behind him and praying that his friends had heard him greet Sydney's father.

"Fine, Agent Weiss, thank you for asking," Jack replied, gruffly, his hand reaching around the other man for the storeroom doorknob. "Have you seen my daughter?"

"Nah," Weiss replied, a bit too quickly. "Nobody in there. Haven't seen Sydney. Maybe she's at lunch. You know how she likes that little coffee shop down the street. Have you looked for her there? I'll bet she's there."

Bristow stood back, stone-faced as always, and regarded Weiss for a long, tense moment. "She's in there, isn't she?" Jack asked. He watched Weiss swallow, hard, and had to curb the impulse to smile. "She's in there with Agent Vaughn, and they're making out like a couple of teenagers."

Another pause, then Weiss finally caved. "Um, yeah. I guess she is."

Jack was silent for a moment, staring beyond him at the closed door with a frown. The arrival of a pair of facility guards saved him from having to make a decision about breaking them up himself; he gave the two guards a nod as they passed, on their way to investigate the faulty storeroom camera. Then he took Weiss by the elbow, leading him back up the hallway. "I'll just have to leave it alone for now," he muttered. "But we need to have a talk, Agent Weiss."

* * *

Neither of them even noticed the tail until the third day, when the follower was forced to run a red light to avoid losing his target. Sydney glanced in the rearview, muttered a sarcastic, "Yeah, buddy, that light wasn't red or anything," and then realized that the driver of the vehicle -- the one that was carefully remaining two cars back -- was Eric Weiss.

Vaughn missed her gasp of surprise entirely; it had been difficult getting him up that morning, and he'd planted a long kiss on her lips before she'd started the car into motion. He'd declared, "You wear me out, Bristow," and slumped against the passenger-side door, where he'd fallen asleep. She glanced over at his sleeping form, then back to the rearview mirror and Weiss' car. His explanations could wait, she decided, but they'd better be good. She continued her drive, calmly and steadily, to the CIA building.

Weiss didn't follow her in when she parked in the CIA's underground structure; she suspected that he didn't realize he'd been made, and he was circling around the block a few times so his arrival wouldn't seem so suspicious. Sydney frowned, but shook the uneasy feeling off and leaned over to wake Vaughn with a soft kiss on the jaw.

"Time to work," she whispered, and he woke suddenly, eyes wide, lips frowning. "Something wrong?" She covered his hand with hers and ran her free hand through his hair, smoothing it a bit.

The frown turned into a smile, and he blinked at her with sleepy eyes. "Just a weird dream," he said. "It's nothing."

She smiled too, and nodded, reaching into the back seat and grabbing his laptop case for him. In the reflection of the passenger-side mirror, she saw Weiss' car pull into an empty space nearby.

"Meet me for lunch today?" she asked Vaughn, as he fumbled with his seatbelt. "There's something I'll want to talk to you about."

He nodded, not quite catching the serious timbre of her voice, and let himself out of the car. "I'm in a meeting until noon," he reminded, "but we can go after that."

"Don't you have a meeting this morning, too?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Seven thirty."

She glanced at her watch, looked back at him and said, "It's seven twenty-nine. You'd better run."

He bit back a curse and raced for the front doors and the security checkpoint beyond, and he'd never even seen Weiss coming. Perfect.

"I think that may be the first time a friend has fled from me with such a look of terror on their face," Weiss said, stepping up next to Sydney and staying at her side as she headed into the building.

"He's late for a meeting," Sydney explained, and then she engaged Weiss in a comfortable pattern of small talk until they were through security and into the elevator. That was when she pulled out a small signal jammer to block out the CIA surveillance cameras and microphones, turned to Weiss, and asked, "Why were you following us this morning?"

Weiss may have been a desk jockey, but he'd trained with the rest of them, and he could lie with the best. "I didn't follow you anywhere, Syd," he said, and laughed a little like she was joking. "Mike would kill me if I was that hot for his girlfriend."

"Do not bullshit me, Weiss. You've been made and this'll be a lot easier if you come clean. You know what I'm capable of. And you know I'll do pretty much anything to protect him. So if you're even thinking that I'm going to drop the subject, that's a fantasy you can put away right now. Tell me what's going on."

He paused, gave her a sidelong look, then tilted his face up to watch the progression of floor numbers displayed above the elevator door. "We should talk to your father," he finally said. "He'll explain things to you."

She put the signal jammer away, and they walked out of the elevator smiling and laughing like two old friends. No one noticed that they made a beeline for Jack Bristow's office, and no one noticed the vice-like grip that Sydney had on Weiss' arm.

* * *

"You are both absolutely, certifiably insane." Sydney made the statement with the unshakeable conviction of poets and priests, but she clutched her briefcase to her chest, placing it like a protective barrier between herself and the two men before her.

"We don't know that it's true, Sydney," Jack reiterated. "But it's a strong possibility. And we didn't want to take any risks. We thought if we tailed him for awhile, made sure he wasn't making any suspicious movements, that we might at least be able to put him in the clear, rule him out as a double."

"Have you noticed any suspicious behavior?" Weiss chimed in. "Has he been acting strangely at all?"

Sydney scoffed at the both of them, her knuckles stark white against the black of her briefcase. "You're not talking about a few days here. You're talking about _months_. Do you realize what it would take to replace Michael Vaughn's entire existance and convince everyone who knows him that nothing's going on? Do you realize what it would take to make a double so perfect that he could fool me into his _bed_?"

Jack flinched, but didn't take his eyes from her. Weiss busily studied the wood grain of Jack's desk.

"Yes, Sydney, I realize," Jack said, his voice pitched low as he tried to soften what he was about to say. "It would take some time with the Helix, which they had. It would have taken thorough intelligence that they would've already gathered, if they knew who Agent Vaughn was, which all indications say they do. It would have taken drugs and interrogation, but they would've broken him, and they would've had everything they needed to turn a stranger into a man we would know."

"It wouldn't have fooled me," she said. She shook her head and scowled, but one tear escaped her eye, and then another. "I would know if it wasn't him. I could tell. This is absolutely ridiculous."

She stood and fled out the office door before either man had a chance to stop her.

"You think she'll tell him?" Weiss asked, miserably.

"No," Jack answered. "Sydney is a spy. She was made to keep secrets. And she won't want him to know that she's doubting him now."

"Jack... do you really think that he isn't Mike? I mean, we _would_ know... wouldn't we?"

"I don't know, Agent Weiss. But I intend to find out."

* * *

Sydney was shaken, but she refused to admit to any lingering doubt. He _was_ Michael Vaughn. Vaughn who had been there with her through ups and downs, pulled her through disillusionment, kept her going, gave her something to fight for. Michael Vaughn who kissed sweetly in the morning and then apologized with a smile for his morning breath. Michael Vaughn who could make her shiver just by running a hand down her arm. Michael Vaughn who could strip her down to the bone with a smile, who dragged from bed early in the morning to walk his dog, who put ketchup on everything and liked to watch the new _Dragnet_ every Sunday night.

This was not a stranger. This was not a traitor. This was not an enemy.

She repeated the words to herself and she believed them almost completely. But the almost disarmed her, and she made a stop at the rotunda floor before heading to the conference room for a briefing. She found him at his desk, and she walked over, leaning on the edge of his desk and placing a hand over his where it rested on the computer mouse.

"Can we push lunch back to one?" she asked, and as he nodded and smiled, she searched his bright green eyes for any sign of alien life. His smile turned puzzled, and she leaned a little closer, whispered into his ear, "I really wish I could kiss you right now."

"I was just imagining taking you right here on my desk," he whispered back, and she laughed as she walked away toward the conference rooms.

He was Michael Vaughn, she thought. The real Michael Vaughn. But oh, God, what if he wasn't?

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to be continued


	3. Chapter 3

Title: **The Art of Retrospection** (Chapter 3)  
Author: agent otter  
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: Alias is not mine. Damn. Neither is Bradley Cooper. Double damn.  
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.  
Author's note: This isn't turning out to be very R-rated, is it? This chapter's also a bit short, but don't worry, the next is coming soon.

  


There was a note waiting for her on her keyboard when the briefing finally ended at one o'clock. It read, _Had an errand to run. Back in time for lunch._ She looked around the ops center, but he was nowhere to be found, so she flipped the note over, pulled out a pen, and wrote her own message in return: _I'll be in my dad's office; find me when you get in._ She dropped the paper on his desk as she passed on her way to the elevators, then took the long journey up several floors and down the hallway to the office that her father called his own.

He looked up as she entered, and waited in silence as she took a seat. "He's not in the office," she said, quietly. "Weiss is tailing him?"

Jack could only nod, and clench his jaw at the sheen of tears in his daughter's eyes. She pulled out her cell phone and began to dial Weiss' number, then cleared it. Dialed again, and cleared it, and wondered why it mattered to her where Vaughn was. But she knew why it mattered, and on the third try she put the call through.

"Where is he?" she asked, as soon as the person on the other end picked up.

"The Thai place just around the corner from your apartment," Weiss answered, and then she severed the connection, standing abruptly. When the phone rang again, it was a surprise, and she nearly dropped the little cellular to the floor.

The caller ID just said "Vaughn". She put the phone to her ear and said, "Vaughn?"

_"Hi,"_ his soft voice said through a slight hiss of interference. _"Sorry to leave you hanging, but I've got Thai. Meet me at your place?"_

"Yeah," she answered. "I'll see you soon."

She tucked the phone back into her pocket, gave her father a long, forlorn look, then left his office.

He picked up his own secured office line, dialed Weiss himself, and said, "She's on her way to meet him at her apartment. Stay on him. I don't think she can hold off on a confrontation anymore, and she may need backup."

Then all he could do was sit, and wait, and stare at the phone, willing it to ring.

* * *

The apartment was quiet when he arrived, and he smiled in satisfaction at having arrived first as he set the take-out bags down on the kitchen counter. It was when he'd begun searching through the kitchen drawers for the candles which he _knew_ were there _somewhere_ that he heard the noise from Sydney's room. He stopped, straightening, and walked slowly, stealthily up the short hallway. The bedroom door was open, just slightly, but not enough that he could see what was happening inside. He glanced at his watch; it had only been seven minutes since he'd called, and it should've taken Sydney at least ten minutes to get home.

From within, another thump and a scraping sound, and he placed a hand on the grip of his pistol as he eased the door open and stepped into the room.

"Francie," he said, and she jumped, dropping a couple of tools to the floor. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I didn't think you'd be home this time of day."

She smiled down at him from the footstool upon which she stood, one hand holding up the light fixture. "I don't really have to be at the restaurant for a couple of hours," she explained. "So I was just getting some chores done. Changing lightbulbs and stuff, you know."

"Yeah," he muttered, but his eyes had already caught onto the objects she'd dropped: a screwdriver, a pair of thin cables, and a tiny surveillance camera with a built-in microphone.

He pulled his gun from the holster in the exact same moment as she let go of the lighting fixture, leapt off the stool, and slammed shoulder-first into his midsection. He managed to retain his grip on the gun, but lost it when she grabbed hold of his arm and slammed it repeatedly against the edge of the dresser. The weapon skittered off under the bed and came to rest against the wall on the opposite side. Her knee caught him in the ribs, and her elbow smashed into his cheekbone with devastating effect; his fingers were tingling from their abuse and now he could see that pins-and-needles pain as a visualization with the stars that swam through his vision.

When she lunged onto the bed, headed for the gun, he grabbed her legs to stop her forward momentum, and vaulted over the bed himself. He crashed into the wall with a complete lack of grace, jarring his shoulder, but he scooped up the gun and aimed in one smooth motion, and somehow he managed to not even flinch as he pulled the trigger.

She fell back against the dresser, and the bullet had caught her in the chest, but she lurched forward again, and his finger squeezed the trigger again. This time she would _not_ be getting up; the bullet had drilled through her face, and there was blood all over the walls, the dresser, the little nightstand and the antique picture frame that sat on it. His hand was clenched so tightly around the gun that he couldn't seem to drop it, and he ached everywhere, from the fight and the gunfire and the certain knowledge that he'd just killed more than Francie Calfo.

They burst into the room together, Weiss and Sydney, but he had only a fraction of a moment to wonder what Eric was doing there before Sydney's wide eyes took in the scene, and looked at him and the gun in his hand. He had only a moment to think because after that, Sydney's gun was out, too, and the plaster next to his head exploded as he ducked.

Later, he would think that maybe he'd been able to dive out that window and flee to his car because Sydney, super-spy though she was, loved him. Later, he'd have time to ponder a thousand actions and reactions that would've kept Francie alive. Later, he'd massage the tense muscles in his gun hand and think about everything he'd killed that day, and cry.

* * *

The motel was in Hollywood, sandwiched between two strip clubs and surrounded by bars, liquor stores, and sex shops. It seemed to have its own resident prostitute on call in the lobby, but when he'd come in she'd looked away. There was probably something about him that told her he was in law enforcement, he thought, or maybe the bruise on his cheek -- blossoming already into sickly shades of yellow -- told her that he was bad news.

He took the stairs two at a time, but approached room #204 slowly, keeping eye out for signs of intrusion. An unlocked door, movement in the window, anything out of place that might betray a trap. He'd only been out of the room for ten minutes, but it would've taken less than one for someone to pick the lock and slip inside.

There was no one else there when he unlocked the door and warily entered. He wasn't sure whether that fact relieved or disappointed him, but he didn't take the time to linger over the thought. His cellular phone lay on the bed -- turned off, so they couldn't track him using the signal -- and he sat down the bags next to it. He'd bought carry-out Chinese from a suspect-looking restaurant, and stopped at the nearest drug store for aspirin, a vapor rub for his aching muscles, and a bottle of cheap whiskey.

He'd lingered in the beauty aisle, eyeing the hair dyes, his gaze wandering to the front windows where he could see a shop across the street selling leathers and costumes and wigs and everything he'd need to fit in at any one of the surrounding seedy nightclubs. There was a metro station locker that no one knew about, filled with cash, ID's, passports, paperwork, gadgets and guns. He could hit that locker at night, empty out the weapons and electronics, the cash, and half of the phony identities.

But he'd have to leave behind a dozen sets of documents, a dozen different aliases. Stephanie Grause. Emilie Banks. Audrey Mollet. Claire Laurant. Sandra Wells. Maggie Walker. Gina Pearson. Fiona Smith. Ellen Gill. Ashley White. Sarah McFadden. Shirley Warren. Ghosts of people who'd never existed, but they all wore Sydney's face. And to leave them behind he'd have to leave her behind.

He sat on the bed, opened the whiskey, rubbed some of the pungent muscle balm into the flesh of his gun hand, and didn't think any more about the locker, the ID's, the guns, or his getaway. Instead, he wondered how and when he should turn himself in to the CIA so that his friend wouldn't be around to shoot at him, and whether they'd put him in a cell near Irina Derevko.

* * *

In the morning he traveled on foot to a small sporting goods store in a strip mall five blocks away, and bought himself a t-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers with all of his remaining cash. Two blocks from there, he hotwired a Ford Focus that had been minding its own business is somebody's driveway, and traveled to the park that sprawled out just behind the Joint Taskforce building. He parked not far from the building itself, stretched briefly, then set off a brisk jog along the path, toward the grizzled black man who sat along the trailside with a sign that read, "Vietnam veteran - please help". The two men eyed each other as he steadily approached, and the homeless man showed no surprise when Vaughn dropped a couple of coins into the outstretched styrofoam cup as he passed by. But there was a little astonishment in the man's voice, only faintly heard as Vaughn jogged away, when he muttered, as if to himself, "Boy Scout requests covert entry."

But Vaughn only managed to travel another two minutes on the path before a run-down blue van jumped the curb, roared across the grass, and screeched to a stop in front of him. The side door was already rolled open, and the barrels of four guns stared him down from within like vipers' eyes. One of them shot him, and as the dart pumped heavy doses of tranquilizer into his bloodstream, his eyes slid shut, he weaved on his feet, and he didn't even feel the hands that caught him and dragged him into the van.

* * *

The morning's briefing was marked by somber expressions, dire predictions, and shouted arguments, until Agent Weinkampf crept in and delivered the small slip of paper to Kendall. The angry argument between Sydney and Weiss continued, uninterrupted, until Kendall broke in, in a quiet voice, to read the note aloud.

"Boy Scout requests covert entry," Kendall said, and the room fell into sudden silence, then abrupt motion as they all piled out of the conference room and into the rotunda. There was already a crowd gathered around the monitors of three techs, who were watching the video feeds from the park. Sydney, Kendall and the rest arrived just in time to watch the van door slide shut and the vehicle roar away, leaving twin trails of demolished grass in its wake.

"You think he was going to turn himself in?" Weiss asked, voicing a question that was on many minds. "Was he prepared to give up information about Sloane's operation? Maybe tell us what happened to Vaughn?"

Sydney shook her head, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "I don't know. If he was, they'll kill him. Those must've been Sloane's guys."

Jack was giving orders to the CIA teams that had immediately tailed the van, but they'd already lost it, in a maze of back alleys and the midst of four traffic accidents. The man who had been Michael Vaughn had disappeared.

------------------------------

to be continued


	4. Chapter 4

Title: **The Art of Retrospection** (Chapter 4)  
Author: Agent Otter  
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: JJ is my god. I worship at his temple.  
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.  
Author's note: For those who've had questions about what's going on, I kind of feel like if I need to write an author's note explaining what's happening then I'm a really shitty writer. Moving beyond my crushing insecurity, I hope that this chapter answers a few of your questions and/or does not suck too hard. I was doing some speed writing so I could knock out this chapter before heading out to spend a long, long, long night on location. (Gloat? Me? Nah.) If anything makes absolutely no sense, feel free to point it out.

  


The most disturbing thing about waking up in the custody of an unknown enemy, Vaughn decided, was not the pounding in his head, the throbbing in his chest where the tranquilizer dart had hit him, or even the sanitarium-style shackles that held him securely strapped down to the bed. The worst part was opening his eyes and seeing Sark sitting at his bedside, watching over him like a psychotic nursemaid.

"Ah, you're awake," Sark said, as Vaughn's eyes blinked hesitantly open on that unwelcome sight. Sark didn't seem too pleased by Vaughn's presence, either. He pulled a cellular phone from the inside pocket of his impeccable suit jacket, dialed, listened, and said only "yes, sir" before hanging up again.

The room was a study in rust and corrosion, and the only clean items in it seemed to be the cot that Vaughn was chained to and the folding chair that Sark sat in. The door was of the oversized rolling variety, and Vaughn assumed that he was in what had once been a storage room inside a warehouse.

Sark stood when the door behind him opened, and moved to the far corner, allowing privacy, and the sole chair, for the man who entered.

Arvin Sloane wore a lightweight cotton suit and a pleasant expression on his face as he sat down, crossed his legs, and folded his hands in his lap. He regarded Vaughn for a long moment, and then said, "How are you feeling? Lucid enough to talk?"

Lucid enough to kill you with my two bare hands, Vaughn thought, but he just watched the other man and waited.

"I must admit, you're a bit of a puzzle to me, Mr. Vaughn. The CIA updated their own internal most-wanted list this morning. Your name is on it. Right under mine, in fact. I wondered if you were intending to give me a run for my money." Sloane's smile wasn't sinister; it was downright warm, and that just made it scarier. "My sources tell me that you shot and killed Francie Calfo. I'm a little upset, since she was one of mine, but I've gotten over it. I'm more interested in hearing all about _you_, Michael. So why don't we start from the beginning?"

* * *

The funeral was on Saturday, and Sydney moved on Sunday. The CIA's relocation office had found her a nice two-bedroom apartment in a quiet neighborhood, one where the landlord had once been with the Agency and she could take Vaughn's dog, Donovan, with her. The Agency even provided her with movers -- probably the only ones in LA with high-level security clearance -- and Will and Weiss helped her unpack in her new apartment. She didn't take any of the furniture with her, but the antique picture frame, thoroughly cleaned by the technicians in the evidence room, was the first thing she pulled from a box and placed carefully on the mantle in the living room. Francie and Will's faces beamed back at her from the picture inside, but she managed not to cry.

Will found excuses to stay most nights with her for the first few weeks, and that turned into a few months, and eventually he just moved into the second bedroom. If he noticed that she jogged more than usual or that she took frequent scalding showers, he didn't say anything. His own grief for Francie was like a living thing, and a few times in his dreams he had his revenge on Michael Vaughn, but in those violent nighttime fantasies he never knew or cared whether the Vaughn he was killing was the real thing or the imposter. When he woke from those dreams he always felt sick to his stomach, and he lay awake, wondering whether the real Michael Vaughn also would've helped him get a job, given him advice, chatted with him over coffee early in the morning at Sydney and Francie's kitchen counter. Sometimes after those dreams, Will would be able to get back to sleep, and when he did, he always dreamed of Sydney, sitting alone on the end of a rickety dock, smiling and carrying on long conversations with the Vaughn who sat next to her only in her watery reflection.

He had dreams of Francie, too, but he never remembered them; only that they were horrifying, and he always woke up covered in sweat and panting for breath. He didn't like to think about them, and he never, ever talked about them.

The dog didn't help, either. Between Syd and Will he got plenty of attention, and Sydney took him jogging every morning, like Vaughn used to do. But the animal could sense the wrongness of his situation, and when they were at home he spent most of his time lying near the front door, waiting for Michael to come home. Sydney had joined him once, and Will had found her sitting in the hallway when he came home from work. She'd smiled up at him, scratched Donovan's head, and stood to let Will through. Neither of them mentioned it after that, but he worried about her, and she worried about him, and they both did a lot of frowning over forlorn little Donovan. They didn't talk about their doubts, though both of them had plenty, and they didn't drive each other crazy wondering whether Vaughn had been a double at all, if there even _was_ another double, if things had been at all what they seemed.

Mostly they spent their evenings watching movies, leaning on each other, occasionally breaking down, and trying not to go slowly insane.

They were both doing fairly well with holding their sanities together, but Sydney broke first. It wasn't because of weakness, or because she was a woman, or even because she'd lost two people instead of just one. It was because, on a Monday morning, her father had walked over to her desk, handed her a thin oversized envelope, squeezed her shoulder, and walked away again.

There was only one photo inside; a slightly grainy black and white, probably shot from a distance with a high-powered zoom lens. The two men in the photo were handsome, bordering on pretty, and they both wore expensive well-tailored suits. The one on the right was turned to look at something that was out of the camera's eye, and his short blond hair was ruffled by the wind that had also snagged the edges of his jacket. Sunglasses covered his eyes, but she recognized him. The one on the left was known to her, too, though his hair was longer and flopping into his eyes, and he wore a layer of stubble on his jaw that wasn't quite a beard and wasn't quite five o'clock shadow, either. They might've looked like something out of a designer cologne advertisement, if there hadn't been a dead body sprawled at their feet, and a burning building serving as a backdrop.

Her breakdown was silent and uneventful, but something snapped in Sydney Bristow as she looked at the photo of Vaughn and Sark and the carnage that surrounded them. When Weiss approached to call her into a meeting, she barely heard him over the rushing sound in her ears. Doubt had disappeared. Someone had stolen her handler's face and was using it to destroy people's lives. Her life.

They would pay. Dearly.

The briefing room was unusually packed when she entered, guided by Weiss' gentle grip on her elbow. Her father was there, and Will, and Kendall, plus a dozen other agents she recognized from operations groups. Their names emerged rapid-fire from her memory, but she wasn't able to hang on to any of them. She sat down next to Will, and didn't even realize until he gently took it from her that she still had the photograph in her hand.

"We've gotten some intel on Sloane," Kendall said, calling the meeting to order by launching into it. The photo that was burned into her memory suddenly appeared on the monitors around the room, and Sydney felt surrounded. "These two men, believed to be in Sloane's employ, were spotted by a surveillance team in Ostrava in the Czech Republic. The building you see in the background used to be a plant that supposedly manufactured mining equipment. It was, in fact, a front for a French crime outfit called Le Syndicat. They're up and comers in the organized crime world, and they were actually using the warehouse for production of long-range ballastic weapons. We believe they were also holding a small number of Rambaldi documents, which is, we suspect, the reason that Sark and Vaughn paid a visit."

Sydney flinched. Weiss noticed. "Could we not call him that?" he interrupted, brazenly.

Kendall blinked at him with surprised and not amused eyes. "Call who what, Agent Weiss?"

Eric gestured toward the room's monitors and the photo still displayed on all of them. "Call him 'Vaughn'," he explained. "We don't think he is Vaughn, right? So how about we call him something else? Like, I don't know... 'Virgil' or 'Tito' or something."

Kendall stared until Weiss' eyes dropped back to the table in front of him, then continued as if there had been no interruption. "Sark and _Vaughn_," he said, "were at this location two days ago. The building is now destroyed and there were no survivors. The CIA asset who took these photographs reports that the men left with a small cylandrical case, which you can just see in Vaughn's left hand in this photograph. That case probably contains the Rambaldi documents, but it won't contain everything they're looking for. Intel indicates that two days before this strike, Le Syndicat moved a second, larger case to their main facility in Paris. We believe it contained maps leading to several artifacts. We also believe that it will be Sloane's next target."

"Unless we get there first," Sydney interjected, steel in her eyes.

"Yes," Kendall agreed. "Unless we get there first."

* * *

Jack Bristow was not normally bothered by reports. When he'd first started working for the CIA, at a bullpen desk in the main building at Langley, reports had driven him, in a quest to process them so quickly that they hardly touched his desk. Over the years, his tolerance to their presence had grown. These days, he rarely bothered with them at all.

But at the moment there were two things bothering him. The first was the thick report on his desk, containing ballistics, fingerprint matching, DNA testing, and equipment analysis. There were also crime scene photos from his daughter's bedroom, showing the corpse in repose, the blood-spattered walls. There were photos of the scattered equipment, half-crushed in a scuffle, when, supposedly, Francie had unexpectedly surprised Vaughn as he installed the surveillance devices. There were several things about those documents that made Jack uneasy. Mostly, he wasn't comfortable with the residue they'd found on Francie's fingertips. Just dust, the analysis team had surmised, probably from touching the overhead lighting fixture, where her fingerprints had also been found.

If she'd been in the one up on that stool, Jack thought, then she was probably the one installing the bugs. He wished, fiercely, that the analysis team had bothered to check Francie's eyes before she'd been interred. Jack had a feeling they would've found an anomoly.

The other thing that was bothering Jack Bristow, however, was a more serious matter. It was a steady stream of cryptic messages and coded communications, and it all seemed to be coming from within Sloane's organization. The first note had come via email, unencoded and unguarded, but disguised as a spam message. He'd nearly deleted it before the message within the message became clear.

_HOT HOT HOT underage boys_, it read. _scoutmasters & young Boy Scouts In Compromising Positions!!! wet and wild at Boy Scout Camp and they're Sending the Pictures home to Daddy!!!!_

Jack got the message: Boy Scout was compromised, but the younger agent was making the most of it, if the photos and intel that followed were any indication.

He only wondered how in the hell he was supposed to tell his daughter.

------------------------------

to be continued


	5. Chapter 5

Title: **The Art of Retrospection** (Chapter 5)  
Author: Agent Otter  
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: I hereby officially disclaim. Amen.  
Spoilers: Anything up through "Firebomb" is fair game, I suppose, though I don't think there's any major plot points given away or anything.  
Author's note: Work? What's that? Also, what's both sad and funny and probably shows about this story is that I have _no_ idea where I'm going with this. Ah, well.

  


Sydney crouched among tall stalks of sugarcane, covered in heavy tactical gear but soaked to the bone by a constant and unceasing downpour, and wondered just what she was doing in Martinique, lurking outside a tiny aircraft hangar just beyond Saint-Joseph.

Technically, she knew why she was there -- to provide support the tactical team and bring in Vincent Chirac -- but that didn't mean it made much sense to her. For the past several months she'd been stalking Sark and Vaughn around the world. Paris was a bust; the men had never been there, and the manuscript never had either. The guards who'd been charged with its transport had been in Sloane's employ all along, and had delivered it without event into his hands. Things went just as poorly for every other opportunity that presented itself: in Hammamet they were a full four days too late, in Ust-Kamenogorsk the building they raided had long been abandoned, and it didn't seem that Sark or Vaughn had ever been in Quito or Korsholm at all.

But Martinique had nothing to do with that mission or that vendetta. It was standard work tracking arms dealers that any of the Agency's field teams could've handled, and she had to wonder why her father, of all people, had insisted that she take this op.

The situation made even less sense when she heard motion in the field behind her, turned, and saw Michael Vaughn standing behind her in the rain.

Her first instinct was to hug him, and kiss him, and tell him how glad she was to see his face. But, she reminded herself, it was only his face before her, and not the man himself. Her second instinct was to kill him, so she thought she'd try for that instead.

He didn't seem to be expecting the attack, so when her right hook caught him across the cheek, he stumbled and slipped to one knee in the mud. She closed in and tried to knee him in the face, but he blocked the blow and surged forward, catching her in the stomach with his shoulder and bearing her to the ground. She landed hard, the breath rushed from her lungs, and suddenly there was a hand clamped over her mouth and a gun pressed into her cheek.

"Don't move, Sydney," the voice hissed in her ear. "Don't make a sound. I'm not going to hurt you, and you're not going to hurt me. Fair?"

She grunted her assent, and was very tempted to sink her teeth into his hand.

He let her go, tentatively, backing away with a slithering crawl through the mud until he was far enough from her to find his feet. The gun remained trained on her head as she pulled herself from the muck and stood as well. "Jesus," Vaughn muttered. "I know Jack likes his secrets but he really shouldn't have been so greedy with this one."

Her fingers twitched, dangling near the butt of the pistol that was strapped to her thigh. She wondered why she hadn't thought to use it earlier. "I'm going to give you one chance to answer this question," she said. "And once chance is all you get. Where is Michael Vaughn?"

His gun hand didn't waver, but he sighed. "He's standing right in front of you, Syd." The hair was longer still than it had been in the surveillance photo from two months ago; it dangled in his eyes now, and was plastered down and darkened by the rain. She thought she detected something hard in his eyes that she hadn't seen there before, and she thought maybe that was the real man in the fake skin, the stranger who'd taken almost everything she'd cared about.

"Vaughn wouldn't point a gun at me," she argued.

"He would if he was afraid you'd kneecap him," Vaughn countered. "Which he is. But as good as it is to see you, Syd, we don't have a lot of time before both of us are missed. I have something for your father."

She tensed when he reached for the courier bag that dangled from his shoulder, but he handed the whole thing to her. When she flipped open the top flap and peered inside, she saw three parcels, wrapped in brown paper.

"Give Jack my regards," Vaughn said. "And tell him that he needs to tell you what the hell's going on before you end up shooting me."

He kept the gun trained on her as he backed away into the cane field, but when he turned and bolted, she pulled her own sidearm and gave pursuit. The radio in her ear, which had silenced at his approach, suddenly burst back into life; she guessed he had a signal jammer somewhere on his person, and that its effectiveness decreased the farther away he moved.

"This is Red One to Red Team, target acquired bearing south southwest through the cane field," she reported. "Target is armed. Abort previous mission and pursue."

"Red One, confirm abort," a voice answered through the commlink.

"Confirmed; there's nobody in that hangar, it was just a dummy mission to get us here. Pursue target immediately!"

The affirmative reactions of her team were shoved to the back of her mind as she followed Vaughn's path through the cane. When she suddenly emerged onto an access road running between fields, she saw Vaughn's back as he started up a motorized dirt bike. She fired four shots at his departing back, and the bike swerved sharply, fishtailing on the wet and muddy track; something clattered to the ground, but she didn't think she'd hit him. He disappeared into the falling rain, and she ran after him only a short distance before abandoning the chase entirely. She reached down and picked up the object he'd dropped, just as the rest of the team burst out of the field.

Dixon was breathing heavily when he approached -- having sprinted from the opposite side of the hangar -- but he managed to gasp out, "Sark?"

Sydney shook her head. "Vaughn." The object in her hands was his pistol, the one he'd held to her head. She slid the clip from the weapon and carefully checked the chamber.

Both were empty.

* * *

There were few things that Jack Bristow genuinely feared. He feared chemical attacks, under which no amount of ass-kicking skills would save anyone. He feared his own weakness for Irina Derevko and what consequences his foolish attraction might one day bring. He had an irrational fear of monkeys that he never discussed, with anyone. He feared losing his daughter and being able to do nothing to save her. He'd always feared _for_ Sydney, but up until then, he had never been afraid of Sydney herself.

He was able to admit to himself that he had thought, somewhere in his foolish delusion, that if she saw Vaughn again she would know that he was the real thing. That Vaughn would explain about Francie, Sloane, the double-agent ploy that had resulted, and everything else, thereby saving Jack from having to do that himself.

But from the look on Sydney's face when she returned from Martinique, he guessed that things hadn't gone quite as he'd imagined.

She'd marched straight to his office and placed three brown-paper-wrapped parcels very carefully and deliberately on his desk. Then she said, "I was asked to give you these. And if you don't tell me what's going on, I swear I will use them to beat your head in."

He called a briefing instead, hoping that avoiding a one-on-one confrontation might strengthen his position. It didn't. He'd briefed Kendall previously, who had agreed that keeping the information from Sydney might be the best course of action. But, Jack was beginning to realize, Kendall believed that keeping _everything_ from Sydney was always the best answer.

The others were more surprised. Sydney paled at the idea that she'd almost shot the real Vaughn -- several times. Will began to tremble when Jack reported that he believed Francie to be the double. And no one in the room seemed to be pleased that he'd kept the information to himself for so long, even if Vaughn's cover _was_ delicate.

"According to the information relayed by Agent Vaughn," Jack explained, "the duplicate of Francie was put in place by Sloane to keep an eye on Sydney's activities. Vaughn himself caught Sloane's attention when he showed up on the Agency's most-wanted list. Vaughn managed what was apparently a convincing story, that he was actually a double agent himself, working within the CIA for The Man. Because of Agent Vaughn's knowledge of Derevko's operation, and the fact that the CIA had him under investigation at the time, any contacts that Sloane has within this Agency would have only been able to confirm parts of Vaughn's story."

"So Sloane recruited him," Sydney concluded, her voice shaky.

"Yes, and Vaughn began passing us intelligence almost immediately. We haven't actually moved on much of his information, because we don't want Sloane to suspect, but the information will go a long way toward destroying Sloane's operation entirely."

The silence in the room was expectant, and Jack knew he'd have more to explain. He hoped that wherever Vaughn was, he was fairing better.

* * *

The first blow was tremendously painful, the second one moreso, and when Sark gripped the front of his shirt and slammed him bodily against the wall, he saw stars.

"It must be true that God cares for fools and children," Sark hissed, his mouth close to Vaughn's ear. "Because you evidently fit into both of those categories. What did you think you were doing?"

"I don't know what you're talking ab--" Vaughn was cut off as Sark slammed him against the wall again, and then again, for good measure.

"Sydney. Bristow. In Saint-Joseph. Ring any bells, you buffoon?"

Vaughn could only gasp for breath, his mind racing as he wondered if this was how and when and where he was going to die.

"I know what you are," Sark whispered. "I know what you're doing. And I swear to you, if you foul it up I will not risk myself to protect you."

Sark gave him one last shake, just for emphasis, then stepped back, smoothing his suit and eyeing Vaughn calmly, as if he hadn't just assaulted anyone.

"I don't know what you mean," Vaughn denied, squeezing the words between clenched teeth and clutching at his stomach where Sark had struck him.

"Irina has briefed me on your situation," Sark said. "I have been ordered to support you, though I couldn't say why Irina is putting her trust in anyone so idiotic as you."

"You backed up my story," Vaughn said, shock written all over his features. "You told Sloane that I worked for The Man. That's why the interrogation only lasted two days. That's why he's trusted me so quickly."

Sark nodded, curtly, and said, "Stay away from Sydney Bristow and the CIA. If you misstep this seriously again, no one will be able to save you, and I certainly won't _want_ to. Do you understand?"

Vaughn nodded, and Sark turned, all grace and poise and deadly refinement, and walked casually out of the passenger lounge and onto the tarmack to board their plane out of Martinique.

* * *

It was only 7:30 a.m., but thus far, Will Tippin was not having a good day.

It had started with his coffee machine malfunctioning and sending hot water cascading over his kitchen countertop. His showerhead broke and he nearly slipped and killed himself on a sliver of soap. Then his car wouldn't start. And, to top it off, the cab that he called for turned out to not actually be a cab.

He didn't notice until they were well underway that the inside door handles at all on the rear doors were soldered shut. But when he did notice that, he also noticed that they were, apparently, enroute to someplace that was nowhere near the "travel magazine" office where he worked.

"Hey, pal, what's going on?" He leaned forward to be heard through the thick plastic barrier that separated the front seats from the back, and that was when he noticed that Sark was driving the car.

The panic was like a riptide; it snared him and pulled him under, where there was no air and no way to fight the current that was pulling him away from safety. He panted and started hyperventilating as he tried desperately to open the doors. He tried to break the windows with his feet. He screamed at Sark to pull over, to let him out, to leave him alone, and when Will started to smell the gas, it was almost a relief to sink into the not-knowing, not-caring bliss of unconsciousness.

* * *

Kendall's morning, by comparison, had started off incredibly well. He'd added an extra quarter-mile to his morning run, and still made it home in time to share a breakfast omelette with his wife.

His day abruptly got worse when he stepped out his front door to head to work and found Michael Vaughn leaning on the railing of his porch, waiting for him to emerge. Vaughn held up a remote detonator, and gave a pointed look to the house, where Kendall's wife was still inside, cleaning up after breakfast before taking off for her own job. Kendall clenched his teeth, raised his chin, and followed without a word to the car parked at the curb.

* * *

Vaughn could think of nothing more boring, or nerve-wracking, then guarding hostages.

Not that he'd done it before, by any means. Maybe if he had, he'd be able to tolerate the accusing glares without such an intense feeling of guilt. None of them had been harmed, but he kept glancing at Will, particularly, and Kendall and Marshall, and wondering if all of them would come out of this okay. What would he do if Sloane asked him to torture one of them? Or worse, execute them? He thought with some dismay that in those circumstances, he'd have to blow his cover; he couldn't allow any of them to be hurt, so matter how many times he'd wanted to beat Kendall into unconsciousness himself.

He was saved from that particular train of thought, at least temporarily, by the arrival of Sark, who informed him that Mr. Sloane would like to see him immediately. Vaughn stood, headed for the stairs that would take him to Sloane's upstairs office in the massive chateau, and left Sark to look after their captives.

Sloane greeted him with a warm smile and offered him an armchair and a glassful of brandy. "You know," the older man said, sinking back into his own chair near the fire. "I knew your father, Michael. He was a good man. A patriot. But there were a few things that I think, to keep them safe, even he would've betrayed his country. You were one. Your mother was another. But you are the very spitting image of your father, Michael, and it makes me wonder. What did you betray your country for?"

Vaughn opened his mouth to answer -- the same answer he'd given during his painful interrogation -- but Sloane waved a hand, silencing him.

"I know what you told me before, about the money and so on. But I know you were lying. A man like you doesn't give up the American dream for something as paltry and inconsequential as _money_. I respect that my employees have secrets, Michael, but there are some you aren't allowed to keep. If I'm going to trust you, if we're going to see this through, then I need the truth from you."

Vaughn knew that this was one of those moments Sark had told him about, where a misstep would cost him his life. He thought about his answer very carefully, and then decided that truth -- or something approaching that -- might just save his neck.

"Sydney Bristow," he said. "The CIA wouldn't let us be together, but Ms. Derevko had plans to recruit her, and was confident that those plans would succeed. She assured me that my cooperation would ensure a safe, normal, comfortable life for both of us."

Sloane's eyes narrowed. "You betrayed your country to the woman who murdered your father, just because you're in love with that same woman's daughter?"

"Yes."

"But Sydney knows the truth about you now."

He swallowed, hard, remembered the bullet exploding from Sydney's gun, biting into drywall not far from his head. "Yes."

"She despises you."

"Yes." He wondered where this line of questioning was going, but knowing Sloane, the man probably just wanted to twist the knife.

"But you still love her enough to sacrifice everything that you are, just to keep her safe."

"Yes." He spoke that truth to help conceal his lies, and he hoped fervently that that would be enough.

Sloane was quiet for a moment, staring at some distant vision that existed only in his mind's eye, and then he snapped out of it with a visible shake. His eyes strayed toward the mantle where, Vaughn knew, there was a photograph of Emily beaming down at the room.

"That's very admirable, Mr. Vaughn," he said, and there was an honesty in his voice that Vaughn had rarely heard. "Misdirected, perhaps, but I'm sure she'll understand, eventually, that you did it all for her." His smile was a grimace, and Vaughn thought that maybe Sloane wasn't talking about Sydney anymore. Sloane's eyes wandered back to the mantle.

"I've made contact with Jack Bristow," he finally said. "Three artifacts from Langley's vault, in exchange for three hostages. You and Sark will go together, make the trade, and take all the standard security precautions before returning here. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"The exchange will be tomorrow at 10 p.m., in Los Angeles, on the 4th Street bridge. Godspeed."

Sloane's attention turned away from him entirely, and Vaughn took that as his dismissal, but when he reached the door, Sloane's voice stopped him.

"Be careful, Michael," the older man said. "Love can make you weak."

He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and replied, "I like to think it makes me stronger."

Sloane nodded and pursed his lips, and he didn't even seem to notice the door clicking quietly shut on Vaughn's exit.

---------------------------------

to be continued...


End file.
